20.8.13

She really did. Or, rather, we put her down. I'm gone in NY, so I didn't have to bring her to the vet (she hates vets). And I don't have to throw away her food bowl, toys. It's harder for the rest of the family.

a poem written by friend and author Russell Hill

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BellaShe ran in the darkness after a ball I could not see,into the sea I could not see, came backand dropped it at my feet, waiting,vibrating like a tuning fork.She ran into the lake in the evening,the lights at Zephyr Cove winking on,came out, shook icy water on us,waiting for the ball to be thrown again.In the park in the darknessshe ran until my arm was tired.She sat in my truck, her head out the window,and when I went into the storeshe moved to the driver’s side,as if she might decide to drive off.Her muzzle grew greybut always the sweet face, the silky ears,waiting at the bottom of the stairswhich way, which way she asked.She watched televisiononly to keep someone company,became from time to time, ellen’s dog,sofia’s dog, emily’s dog, christopher’s dog.She lay at the corner of the coffee shopand raised her headto those who bent to tell her,you’re a good dog, aren’t you?Best dog, black dog, sweet dog, big dog,dog of our hearts.

12.8.13

Charlotte Bydwell, writer and solo artist of Woman of Leisure and Panic shares the
same name, the same city of origin (Montreal), and the same aspirations for
artistic success, as the character Charlotte in this 45 minute work. But the
character Charlotte displays an unrelenting knack for living a life of stress,
dissatisfaction and distraction. Such self-flagellation would never lead to the
funny and complicated work that Bydwell has created. Premiering in 2011 at the
terraNOVA Collective’s soloNOVA Festival, and performed this month as part of
The New York International Fringe Festival at the 14th
Street Y, Leisure and Panic is an unsettling but engaging mirror of our
own obsessions.

Leisure and Panic
begins with an emphasis on the importance of art and creativity (Bydwell’s
modes of artistry are numerous, including dancing, writing and acting). With a
fat marker on an oversized calendar, Charlotte marks off designated time to
“create.” This, we understand, is her priority in life, even though, within
minutes, the calendar is overlapping with time to exercise. Time to work.
Family time. There is no time to do it all. When Charlottes cell phone
alarm blares, she bursts into a fit of jumping jacks, (the phone acts as a sort
of theatrical chorus, often used to propel the play forward). When the phone
rings, it is her boss asking her to cover a shift. When there is a moment of
quiet, she fills it with flirtatious texting. Oddly, the one thing we never see
Charlotte attempt to fit in is that oh-so-important act of creativity, an
absence that makes Charlotte shallow and taunts us with the question of what a
real artist is…can you really schedule inspiration?

It is useful to separate the artist from the
actress when the realism of this work makes the absurd exaggeration of her
regimented and stressed life believable (and made all the more fresh with
perfect comedic timing and beautifully simple stage directions). Some moments
of despair hit close to home and are met with knowing laughter, like when
Charlotte spends hours trying to text a response to a possible love interest,
only to end up lamely typing “ha”. With a crown of flyaway hair illuminated by
backlight, Charlotte is at once hysterical and angelic.

This dualism of personality is a continuous
rollercoaster of emotions, leading to exhaustion that manifests itself in an
unhealthy relationship with her body. Bydwell’s script nonchalantly reveals the
mindset of a girl with an eating disorder. From obsessing over calories, to
exercising during a date on the floor of a bathroom, to constantly measuring
herself, abuse to the body is more realistic and more disturbing than any other
theme in the show. Bydwell never slows down to assess this imbalance and
possible disease. Anorexia is projected as de rigueur for a person with
deadlines and dreams, and any possible commentary on health is passed by. By
not providing respite or solutions to an unhealthy life and unfulfilled
artistic life, Bydwell depicts an existence too blinded by everyday distraction
to delve into true passion. This makes the work better, not worse. By not
acknowledging deeper issues, this one-woman show maintains the narrow viewpoint
of a 20-something artist who can only focus on what is right in front of her.

Leisure and Despair
is without a climax, though the build up of anxiety desperately calls for
emotional release. The character’s distress imitates that whirling unstoppable
flood that audience members associate with their own lots in life. Leisure
and Despair keeps us in its distressed vortex, and by the end of the show
Charlotte’s anxiety is ours. “That’s what my life is,” a woman leaving the show
said to her friend. “Can you say, ‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday’?” This
build up of anxiety is both frustrating, and perfect. We are like her, and although
this is nothing to brag about (the character is possibly jobless, definitely
penniless, and with little respite on the horizon) it engenders solidarity. And while the work’s
perceptions and mockery of modern life ring true, by neither condemning nor
romanticizing a hectic lifestyle the audience is simply left to question how
much their own life resembles this onstage stress-fest.

It’s interesting that we only see Charlotte
frayed at the edges as she aspires to ‘create,’ when Leisure and Panic
is so beautifully crafted. No such work would be produced from the lifestyle
that Charlotte the character leads. Charlotte Bydwell found a way to create an
engaging and multilayered play, regardless of distraction or outside demands.
Apparently, though, she doesn’t want to give out that secret just yet.

1.7.13

For Hee Ra Yoo, choreographer and artistic
director of Yoo and Dancers, New York
is a web of difficulties, ensnaring even its most optimistic residents. Yet Yoo’s
young company took control of the Dixon Place stage June 27th, dancing
boldly in the new work “Almost There…” Sharing the stage with a tangle of ropes,
the six dancers form a supportive corps, helping one another as they weave
their way – and sometimes get stuck – in chaos.

photo: Ji Ye Kim

Yoo and Dancers
appropriate doors, walls and railings of the theater for their dancing needs, a
measure of command that is a welcome reminder that the company is performing
“Almost There…” as a culmination of three months work at Dixon Place’s
artist-in-residency program. Dancers hang from the bannisters. They use support
beams as anchor points for the carefully choreographed flexible cords that
dissect the stage; throughout the piece, a new cord almost always serves as a
transition into a new movement phrase or effort.

So
progresses Yoo’s “Almost There…” And if the structure is formulaic, it is also
a pleasant build of form and energy and sheer stuff onstage. The choreography would benefit from less linear
progression, though. Balletic phrases, peppered with Horton hinges and side
tilts, are beautiful on the trained dancers but superficial. “Breathing can
give an impulse to movement, a notion that is common in my native Korea,”
writes Yoo in the program notes. Interestingly, there is no breath connection for
the individual or group in this work. Dancers often pause mid-step to sync with
a partner or plow ferociously through a phrase to catch the rhythm. Extrinsic
movement that stemmed from the limbs actions rather than a subtler core kept
the movement skimming the floor and unstable.

It
would be interesting to see how “Almost There…” would change if it borrowed the
kinesthetic and somewhat aimless quality of its’ most memorable section. This
moment is one of the first in the hour-long work; on an empty stage, Lauren
Camp sits with her back to a passive coil on the floor. Her attention is rapt,
focusing on her right hand that gently becomes a force, compelling her foot to
move in tandem with its gesticulations. With singular focus and articulate care
for the symmetry of this foot-hand connection, she breathes a calm essence into
this solo, and we breathe softly with her. Camp’s winding motions lead her
slowly to the unassuming rope. Once acknowledged, the coil enlivens, beckoning
and teasing her along its path. And so begins a slow progression of the dancers
weaving ropes across the stage, gamely ensnaring themselves even as they
simultaneously push against this entrapment.

Oddly
enough for a work that largely consists of dancers imprisoning themselves, “Almost
There…” never provokes anxiety. One dancer, in a noose of yellow and pink rope,
cocks her head at an entrapper (whose hands guiltily paw the strings hanging
from her companions neck) and smiles. Dancers maddeningly step into traps,
squirm for a moment, and then slip out of the binds. If Yoo is meaning to imply
that New York captures idealistic residents in its web, then she also implies
that liberation from this web is as easy as simply loosening the knots that you
tightened yourself.

"This
work is about our collective dream to reach our desires in a modern, chaotic
world. The dance emerges from New York City, (and) is a constant reminder of
the forces of people in a crowded space," read Yoo’s program notes.
As the dancers smile at one another through their apparent difficulties, it
becomes clear that the “forces” Yoo mentions are forces for good. She
recognizes the support a crowd can bring, rather than the suffocation and
detachment that a pessimist may see in a crowd.

“Almost
There…” is aptly affirming and uplifting in its final moments.

The
music surges. Dancers leap outwards in unison, a firework bursting to a final
hurrah. The ropes break, and now unstrung, they lie pathetically on the floor.
These were our binds? Our restrictions from our desires? Yoo seems to ask. The
dancers join together and smile. They will ascend to their dreams now. If only
they have the gumption and wherewithal to leave those ropes on the floor this
time.

21.5.13

you can read it here (with comments and other reviews) on the Dance Enthusiast:

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You are supposed to hear a soundscape of measured plops and drips. The
rippling waves of noise a balm your senses as you watch the dance gather in its
own amplifications. Instead, “Bathtime Studies: Duet,” choreographed by
EmmaGrace Skove-Epes becomes a collaboration with an unknown guitarist
performing in an adjacent room. Skove-Epes, sitting on an inset windowsill
watching Gyrchel Moore and Nadia Tykulsker perform her choreography, doesn’t
flinch at the overlapping of performances. It washes over her.

“Bathtime Studies” was one of countless (you could count – I didn’t, as
the performances spanned four hours and multiple rooms, hallways, bathrooms)
works performed at AUNTS' "Time Share: Chain Curation". The show,
with an entrance fee of a donation of clothing, or beer, or “just whatever”
also doubled as a flea market and snack party. You watched the dances, or ate
instead. Discussed the artists’ work, meandered from one installation to the
next, or just got drunk, as you pleased. Many did please, filling
Arts@Renassaince in Greenpoint – a bleak structural core stripped of any
decoration– so that to watch a woman fingering herself in a corner room meant
pushing past a crowd. It’s odd, pushing your way through sardined bodies to get
a good view of a vagina. Is closer better for a detailed view? You can see
she’s shaved, and pink. But edge back a few steps. Watch the woman behind you
in the red bathing suit with a wedgie and long blonde wig scrape her knees
against the cement as her body shakes heavily in time to the sorrowful song of
a woman wailing.

The solo form dominated the evening, and one had to wonder if
choreographing for one (and usually oneself) was purposeful or by necessity. It
is gratifying to watch an artist seep into an idea with singular clarity, but
intention sucked some of the dances into vortexes of themselves. A dance that
began with pained crawling on the floor also middled and ended on that floor,
in that pain. Improvisation can find movement and expression unknown to the
choreographed dance, but dance one note for ten minutes and the audience will
move on. Maybe they’ll go get another beer.

A choreographed duet does not allow complete release into the dance
while performing. There are parameters that you and your partner agree upon so
that your singular clarity has structure and perhaps some striated thinking
behind it that comes from collaboration of different mindsets. “Bathtime
Studies” has great sensitivity to form – patterned time and structural grids loosened
with movement - that comes from a necessity translate a singular idea to the
audience that both dancers and choreographer have agreed on.

When the guitar from the other room overpowers the “Bathtime Studies”
soft music, Moore and Tykulsker rely on the syncing of their internal rhythm.
After a brief prelude of establishing the edges of the room in three quick
jaunts around the space, the duet settles its focus on a rectangular ladder of
tubs, spaced out equally in 2 rows. They begin plucking their way up and down
the rows with a bucket weighing heavy in their hands, slowly pouring their
burden into the bins. When Moore plunges her foot into a container that isn’t
yet filled with water, the lack of physical or audible resistance suspends the
step for a moment – it is the grasp of your foot as it reaches for a step that
isn’t there. When both women simultaneously bury their faces into the miniature
pool and blow bubbles, this gives us pleasure. When they submerge their eyes,
mouth, nose, and are still, we still our breath, too.

Accessing what the audience knows of water – its density, heat and
wetness – Skove-Epes creates a work that physically attunes viewer with
performer. When the dancers repeat (and
repeat) a unison duet that traverses them precariously along the raised edges
of the bins, their speed increases incrementally each time. The subtle
intensification is enough to make your eyes, nose, mouth wonder what it will
feel like to be pushed into the water this
time. Your body wonders what this dance feels like, and so you are eager to
keep watching.

The decaying walls of Arts@Renaissance are strong enough to enclose each
performance within a dedicated space, and spatial separation is enough to
justify the self-contained nature of each solo (and sometimes a duet). But the
music will not stop at physical barriers, the audience can leave midway through
the piece, and the desolation of the space makes each dance grey and lonely. One
dance seeps into the next and their singular purpose is blurred. Perhaps it was
an ensemble work all along.